


One

by DScully93



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Mental Health Issues, Or not, Post-My Struggle III, Season 11
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-02-28 23:27:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13282143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DScully93/pseuds/DScully93
Summary: "You don't understand, Mulder.” She turned, her face covered with tears, moving slightly away from him “I am this darkness, I carry it.”(English Version)





	1. Darkness In Me

It was not to be about death, until it came to dealing with it. First her father, then her sister, her partner (two or three times), herself (more times than necessary), her mother, the fear of losing her child once and for all...  
In a nutshell she was destroyed in every aspect of life.  
She pretended that she lived a normal life without Mulder, but she felt the warmth of her body every morning just to find the cold that announced her lack. Pretended that she liked a normal job, but felt suffocated by the sameness. Pretended to live well with loneliness, but she always cried when she opened the door to her apartment when she thought she heard someone, only to find it empty.  
Going back to work on the X-File had been her spark of happiness that was slightly erased by more pain and sacrifice and death surrounding her, but in the end... Was it all a dream, a vision or was she finally going crazy? It didn’t matter, she just couldn’t stop thinking that everything would fall apart again and that she would wake up again with a piercing pain running through her brain like smoking knives melting every fold of her brain mass.  
“Dana?”  
And there they were again. Mulder comforting her as he had been constantly doing for a week and she clinging to every bit her hands could reach. She needed him, needed to know that he was still there, that he was still alive, that the world hadn’t yet turned to hell and that she could still save him and save them all.  
“Mulder...” She whispered over his shirt “Mulder, I'm so sorry...”  
“Hey!” Mulder said firmly, holding his face. "It's all right, I'm still here. You're in my apartment, we're fine! You're fine, I'm fine.”  
"I can’t save you." She sobbed again uncontrollably. "Why? I'm your doctor, I found the cure! But I couldn’t save you Mulder, all at times! I always lose you.” She fired down the tone progressively “I always fail.”  
"Scully." He pulled her into his arms, hugging her as close as possible and holding his own sob. "Scully, listen to me. This is no longer visions. I refuse to believe they are! The first time you saw me dying I believed, but in no world wouldn’t you be able to save me. Even though I do not believe this sort of thing I can tell you” he laid his chin on his head and started low “You are my guardian angel or something like that. You always get me from where I'm not supposed to be and heal me of anything I'm feeling, you bring me back to life if that's necessary, but you always save me." She even cradled him, hugging closer. "Maybe I need you to prescribe some blue pills for me... "She laughed against his chest, making him laugh together and speak again, now seriously. “But, you always save me. It was just a nightmare, we're working on it, everything will work out, do not doubt it.”  
"I can’t lose you Mulder, not again, not forever.” She looked at his face, partially lit by the bedside light, which was now constantly on.  
"And I can’t lose you either, Scully. But I need you to believe me in the same way I believe you." He spoke as he pulled her hair out of his pajamas. "I believe you.”  
"I can’t, Mulder ..." She looked at her hands that were on the sheet. "I don’t know if I even trust myself, in what I see, in what I think I'm seeing… What if everything is…”  
“Scully.”  
“I know Mulder! You're going to say that I don’t want to believe in what I saw, but isn’t that, isn’t about being real or not, it's about ...” she got up and started walking around the room “It's about being too real, so real that I'm afraid that something is happening. For me it was a dream, something I had during a seizure, but what if all that I'm living now is a hallucination? The last thing I remember is you inside a car dying, I knowing I can’t save you and a spacecraft over us and what if ... what If this is all some kind of projection…”She puts her hands over her head as she has been constantly doing. “My brain is frying, Mulder. I don’t know what's real anymore; I don’t even know who I am.” She stared at him sitting on the bed, his feet on the floor, his hands mimicking hers, fingers running through the strands of hair “Mulder?”  
"You never told me about the spacecraft, Scully.” He looked at her worriedly from where he was." I really think you should see a friend of mine, he's a psychiatrist, maybe he'll help you ..."  
“Mulder, no!” She shrieked, turning to the window. "I'm not crazy, Mulder. I'm not.”  
“Dana ...”  
"Do not do this, Mulder," his voice trembled again. "Do. Not. Do. It.”  
“I can’t ignore this, not even you can in case you have already thought about. But everything, all the signs, all points to Dissociative Disorder, Scully. And it's okay, it's been a long time since you've worked so hard, we've seen each other again, we spend nights reading files, all that ..." he tried to organize the words as best he could as he slowly approached her “All that darkness that I bring with me it reappeared in your life and this... This brings an emotional charge that is totally acceptable not to endure.” He hugged her from behind resting his chin on top of her head “The seizure was just a taste of what it can do to you, Scully. You need to see someone and get away from that darkness as fast as you can.”  
"You don't understand, Mulder.” She turned, her face covered with tears, moving slightly away from him “I am this darkness, I carry it.”


	2. Suspicious friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a slightly bigger chapter but it was a lot of fun to write, much of it was written on the GG Red Carpet! I'm no expert at anything so disregard any wrong information, Google's fault.  
> I hope you like it, thank you to all who are following the story, you make me a very happy human being.

"Dissociative disorder has a great incidence in women, much more than in men, only for that reason I could already diagnose you with this problem taking into account your reports, but I got access to your scans and I asked a doctor, friend of mine, an assessment ." Dr. Bourke put the CT scans on the table indicating the large circles with a red marker on the front of the brain" Although it wasn’t my area I never witnessed dissociative disorder accompanied by as many pains as Mulder reported on the phone "Scully leaned back in his chair as he studied the CT scans. "I think something more serious might be happening here, and by my recommendation and from my friend, look for a neurologist as soon as possible."  
"So in short, wouldn’t it be a case of dissociative disorder?" Mulder asked as he tried to decipher Scully's expression.  
"The difficulties of sleeping, the recurring confusions about events and the 'visions,' could classify something like that, but as I said, I've never seen anything like it, Mulder, and you know I've seen a lot." The psychiatrist leaned back chair smiling slightly at the old friend, who answered sadly.  
"Scully?" Mulder called her, pulling her out of the trance. "What do you think?"  
"Can I take these CTs?" Scully asked as she stored them in the envelope on the table.  
"Of course, as long as you promise to see a neurologist on Monday." Dr. Bourke smiled as he rose to accompany them to the door. "It was good to see you again, Mulder. Better yet know that you're still alive. "  
"It was good too, BigBou." Mulder said taking Scully's purse from the couch as they left the room. "Thanks again."  
"It was a pleasure, Dr. Bourke." Scully squeezed the doctor's hand, and then felt a familiar hand on the base of her back as they walked down the hall. "BigBou?"  
"You just met someone who ate more pies than I did during college, surgeries can hide a great past ..." Mulder said as he held the door to the parking lot and smiled  
&&&  
Fear was something Dana was already accustomed to, her work in the X-Files was something that scared her much more often than she wanted. But that fear, the one she knew, was something she loved, it was the fear of the unknown, something she didn’t know yet but could go through until she found a way to overcome it, but what really made Scully afraid was to know that, precisely because of this dedication, she knew when something simply couldn’t be overcome. It was like finding an old enemy knowing that you will never be able to overcome it because you know every molecule of it, if Scully couldn’t defeat something it is because that probably couldn’t be surpassed.  
"Dana?" She felt his hand on her knee as the car slowed and stopped at the traffic light, pulling her thoughts away and turning her toward him;  
"Mulder, I'm fine." she replied, watching him continue to drive.  
"O.k."  
"O.k.?" She insisted after a few seconds, arching her eyebrow "No speech about knowing I'm not fine?".  
"I know you're not fine, Scully, and I know why, but I just wanted to know if you wanted coffee, I was going to stop at Starbucks on 6th Street." He smiled as he turned the corner.  
"Mulder."  
"Yes?"  
"Can you take me to my apartment?"  
"Night of isolation?" He asked, leaning against the door without meeting her gaze.  
"Night of isolation." She felt his hand reaching for hers as he nodded.  
She simply couldn’t do it, couldn’t even think about how Mulder would know what was happening or about him being as understanding as possible, she couldn’t even look at him, after what happened in the visions she couldn’t forget the image of him so near to death and that ... that made her see him as she had been blocking for a long time. She said she needed him and maybe, for the first time after a long time, Mulder was what she really missed.  
"Here we are!" Mulder tried to appear as positive as possible as he watched she took the purse from the backseat with the door closed, "Please keep the phone nearby, if anything happens I'll probably call you." she said as she wrote something in a block of medical prescriptions "I forgot to say, but my migraine remedy is in the last, so if you can buy some, here's the name and the milligrams."  
"Right." Mulder put the paper in his wallet and looked at her. "Call me before 'anything' happens, without hesitation. Please".  
"Mulder ..." She took his hand and looked deep into his eyes, still the same eyes, the same sweetness and intensity of 25 years ago, a mix of desire, concern and affection that always happened when his gaze fell over her and made her want to invite him to the apartment as they used to do, how she used to relax, how they used to love, everything always started in the car, with more intense eyes and fingers interlaced "Good night, see you tomorrow." not today. Today was a day of fear, and fear cast a shadowy shadow as she crossed the street and left him alone in the car.  
&&&  
"Come on, take it!" Skinner waited impatiently in the car on the way to Mulder's apartment. "Come on, Mulder!"  
"The dialed number is outside the service area, after the signal leaves a message".  
"Damn it, Mulder!" Skinner hit the steering wheel with all the force of the nervousness he felt now. He wasn’t used to lose his temper, not easily, not with Mulder and Scully. Usually something very wrong should be done by both of them so that Skinner really did lose his patience, but the problem was: He was the one who was doing something very wrong.  
Skinner took the car keys and crossed the wide street toward the apartment Mulder had been living in the last few months, he was tense, he looked around trying to identify any suspicious movement that would announce the presence of the two men who had been watching him since his conversation with CSM a week ago, and that he (apparently) had managed to get off in the morning, after an hour and a half coming in and out of alleys.  
"What do you want?" The deep voice came through the door of the apartment Skinner had been knocking for five minutes, unanswered.  
"We need to talk, Mulder," he shifted his weight and pulled out the cap he was wearing. "Open the door."  
"Determined to confess your sins, Walter? Because if it's that, we can do it that way. "Skinner heard the bolts moving.  
"Thank you." he replied as he found Mulder with his gun in his right hand, a towel on his left shoulder wearing a T-shirt and jeans, his hair still wet.  
"For what? Do not shoot you? "He made room for the man to pass by and looked down the hallway before closing the door." Just thank me when you get out of here alive." he observed Skinner, head down, dropping his own gun on the kitchen counter." What do you want?"  
"I want to apologize, and give some important information I got."  
"And I can believe that?" Skinner knew he meant more about his apologies than the information, but he still went on.  
"CSM came looking for me last week," he said as Mulder pulled a stool off the counter and sat with his gun in his hand. "More precisely, I was greeted in my car by Reyes with a gun on the back of my neck."  
"Reyes?" Mulder looked pale, more disappointed than surprised.  
"In short, once again he wants to exterminate humanity, save a select group and master what remains. The problem is, as far as I understand, he needs William for this. "  
"That sounds familiar to me." Mulder said, seeming not to be shaken by the news.  
"He knows how to find William and apparently knows that Scully is looking for him too." Skinner said, avoiding the most disturbing part of the story. "And he is going to confront her, or your life or William’s."  
"Is he going after Scully?" Mulder looked increasingly tense.  
"Not that I think she cannot give a good kick in his ass and at the same time find William, but it seems that this time is a bit more serious than it used to be, he seems very determined." Skinner put his hand on pockets as he stared at Mulder's bedroom door. "I called her this morning, but I couldn’t get an answer, I called you and I couldn’t get in touch, I presumed that you two were still here, so I showed up. I've spent a good amount of time trying to fool the guys who are watching me, but I think we're safe now. "  
"Are you under surveillance?" Mulder stood up, going to the windows "Why?"  
"CSM offered me a deal: he would leave you both alone if I prevented you from finding William, blocking documents, money, kidnapping you ... anything that would prevent you or Scully from finding William first than he did." He had Mulder's attention again. "I accepted it, I'd rather be the one in charge of stopping you than any newcomer from the Bureau." Mulder sat again unlocking and locking the gun steadily. "I know you will not trust me even if I tell you that I'm on your side, mostly because of what happened to Scully last week, but I had to try to explain myself and explain what's really going on.”  
When Mulder was about to answer, they heard someone pulling the lock. Mulder ran to the counter and picked up Skinner's gun, now with two guns pointing one at Walter and one at the door.  
"God, Mulder." He heard the familiar voice on the other side of the door and relaxed the tension. "You could at least give me a new copy when you change the lock, which in this case would be every week"  
"Sorry" He tried to smile as he opened the door, still pointing the gun at Skinner "I completely forgot"  
"Walter?" Scully looked confused at him and back at Mulder. "What's he doing here?"  
"Time for updates, Scully," he said as he closed the door and directed her toward the couch. "Maybe you should sit down."  
&&&  
"THAT SON OF A BITCH!" Scully walked nervously around the room as she shouted, "IF HE TOUCH A FINGER IN OUR SON, MULDER ... I swear by God, I'm going to make sure he's dead for eternity!"  
"This is my Scully" He crossed his legs and put his arm on the back of the sofa, watching Skinner who was in the armchair on the right "Will you trust him? In all this history?"  
"If he's lying or hiding something, he's going to end up in the same grave as that son of a bitch," she said, folding her arms across her chest and staring at Skinner. "Did you hear me?"  
"Loud and clear." Skinner said, staring at Scully, trying to pass as much confidence as he could. "So what are we going to do?"  
"You're going to keep spying CSM and Monica." Scully said, pointing to Skinner and then turning to Mulder. "And we're both going to find William.Today.".


	3. Close Encounters, Part. 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was very large, so I had to divide it into two parts (the second part will be posted tomorrow).  
> Thank you once again for those who follow the story, you are great.  
> This chapter got a little too emotional, but I'm not ready for the fact that Mulder can actually talk to William this season.  
> Sentences in italics with # are flashbacks from previous episodes.  
> Hope you like it.

Buffalo, NY. 03 P.M.  
"Van De Kamp, William," Mulder whispered as he typed the name into the FBI's search engine, "Nothing."  
"I'm sure that's what Spender told me." Scully handed him the muffin that served for lunch to the two, after a six-hour drive with no stops. "You wrote right?"  
"Yes." Mulder finished chewing. "I tried to search only the surname, but it's about six pages of results."  
"God." Scully leaned back. "I can’t believe that we traveled six hours to get off the radars and we'll probably have to go back to D.C."  
"Go Back?" Mulder took a sip of the soda they were sharing.  
"If anyone has this information it's the DC adoption system, even if we find a William Van De Kamp, and it's our William, all the information will be blocked by the adoption system." She picked up the soda and took a sip. "If they have changed his name after the adoption the chance to find him by database is almost zero.”  
"You said that William has spoken to you ..." Mulder began delicately to the subject, his voice more comforting than usual. "Didn’t he said anything that would help?"  
"No, not that I was able to identify." Scully sighed sadly at the window across the room. "Neither did Spender. We have nothing, Mulder. "  
"Hey" she felt his hand on her shoulder and turned to see Mulder smiling gently "We'll find him, you know we will, we just have to look in the right place."  
&&&  
Manor Inn Hotel, 08P.M.  
"Yes, that's it." Scully started to print the e-mail while holding the phone with her shoulder. "Thank you so much, Paul. I owe you the manuscript”  
"You did it?" Mulder glanced over the computer screen, with the hashi standing in the air holding a mouthful of the Japanese food they had ordered.  
"Yes!" Scully said excitedly as she sat next to him. "When William was about 5 months old, he had a slight drop in neutrophils, I was worried at the time, but I managed to normalize his rates in a short time." She passed some pages showing some data to Mulder, who still didn’t seem to understand.  
"This drop is quite uncommon in children, especially as young as he was at the time. While I was trying to remember something he might have told me in the visions I ended up remembering that for a while, shortly after giving him up for adoption, I was very scared thet he would go to a family unprepared if he had that kind of drop again or even Neutropenia, which would be a very serious neutrophil drop " Mulder nodded, stating that he was following "One of the only recognized Pediatric Neutropenia centers is in Indiana. " She pointed to a name in the email "Fort Wayne. I decided to take a look at the team there and I found an old college friend. "She pointed to the name" Paul Stevens”  
"It was him you were talking to on the phone." Mulder finished looking at her, Scully was lit with enthusiasm.  
"Yes! We were very good friends back in college, we did a lot of research together, and before I started to get interested in the FBI, we planned to work together after graduating. "Scully pointed to another name on the sheet “With children affected by Neutropenia. "  
"Jackson Van de Kamp." Mulder read where Scully was pointing and felt his heartbeat change. "How did you get it? It's him?”  
"I asked Paul to send me some notable cases in the area because 'I'm going back to work in the area and I need a point to start research again' and he agreed to send me as long as I send the first manuscript." Scully smiled reading the name "It could be him Mulder, it was the only Van de Kamp I found on the list, had an inexplicable recovery ... until the characteristics"  
"Blue eyes, brown hair, 10 years at the time, 161 Cm, intelligence above expectations ..." Mulder read the e-mail where the patient's file was, smiling "Damn it, Scully" he turned around and found her smiling like he hadn’t seen for a long time. "You found him, you found our son."  
"Yes, I did." she said, smiling, looking at all the paperwork they had managed to gather during the day. "I just looked in the right place."  
"And it's just eight-forty at night." He saw her wiping her face as she turned to get up, he held her "Dana ..."  
"We'd better start packing this mess; I want to leave tomorrow for Fort Wayne." She tried to disguise her choked voice.  
"Dana," Mulder said louder, making her look at him. Pain. He could identify the pain in her eyes. "Do you want to talk about it?"  
"I can’t ..." She flinched in the chair, letting all her defenses fall; she couldn’t take it anymore.  
"Tell me." Mulder stroked his hair "Please"  
"The CT scans ... I hadn’t had access to them yet." Mulder pulled the chair closer and put his arm around her, nestling her against his chest. "The doctor that Dr. Bourke asked for evaluation saw something that the first doctor let it pass." she lowered her voice even more" A mass between the membrane that lines my brain and the skull." She sighed "it may be nothing, remnants of my previous cancer or something benign, but ... I have to do some tests, more CT scans, blood tests ..."  
"And you're scared," Mulder deduced "that in that time we're looking for William and you're not treating yourself, the cancer is coming back or getting worse" he felt her more tense as if it were something bigger. "Or yet, that the visions are signs of cancer already very advanced." He felt her sobbing against his chest and tightened her grip, as if not letting her go.  
"What if he's not talking to me, Mulder?" She started between sobs. "What if it's all a hallucination and we're going after a kid who has a normal life, a normal family to bring him to this hell we don’t know at least if it will happen”  
"Dana," he called out. "You're not crazy."  
"How do you know? How did you even know why I wasn’t well yesterday? How?" She stood up speaking firmly, without shouting, but with a distrustful tone in her voice "Why have you been so understanding, so ..."  
"Normal?" He completed what he knew she was going to say. "I didn’t know that your cancer could have come back, but I knew it was something related because the CT scan. You showed me yours back then, and I was so ... scared by the whole situation of getting too close to losing you that I recorded the day you told me in my memory. "  
#"You were the only one I called"#  
Scully was standing in the middle of the room with tears rolling down her face.  
"And about being normal." Mulder closed the computer cover and stared up at the purple sky that was announcing the night through the bedroom window. "A lot has happened these last few years, Scully. Back to work with you ... It was like having a second chance, not only to be a better partner, but also to be a better friend to you." he sighed. "I'm still the same, with my same crazy things, but I'm trying to be a little more rational, more human with the people around me.” He watched her sit on the end of the double bed in the middle of the room. "Especially with you. I don’t want to lose you again. "  
"Mulder ..." She said quietly, but he kept talking.  
"And now, with the imminence of finding Will." she sobbed into the bed. "He's my son too, Scully, I'm as scared as you are, more than I seem to be." His voice trailed off. "I have to be responsible, even if we know him from far, even if he doesn’t want to talk to us, even if he doesn’t even know about me "his voice diminished "even if he hates me."  
"Mulder!" Scully spoke louder between sobs, rising, her face already red from crying, and going to him. "Do not even think about it for a minute."  
"I left you two, Scully." He sobbed and felt her hands hugging him from behind and the little kisses she left on his left temple. "Twice. He has every reason to hate me, you two are absolutely right."  
"Don’t do it, honey." He shivered at the hoarse voice of her, whispering in his ear. "Don’t do it, you know I don’t hate you." She smiled against his face. "I'll never be able to hate you. Neither in this life nor in the next. "  
"I'm so sorry." Scully felt Mulder relax under her arms and saw a faint smile. "Damn, Scully" He said pulling her arms a little closer so the hug gets a little tighter "I love you so much"  
#"Oh Boy"#  
"I know." She kissed him again on the cheek, taking a little longer to smell the aftershave he had spent the morning, the same as I always loved. "Let's pack it up and get some sleep, I want to go out tomorrow early.”  
"Okay." He turned his face to look at her, being greeted with a light touch of lips that lasted less than 3 seconds.  
"And never think I've ever been able to hate you, you idiot."  
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, first fanfic here but not first in life. It had been a long time since I had written anything, so it was like coming home after a very long journey of self-knowledge. Season 11 really started driving me crazy so I had to put out everything I was thinking. Not yet complete so updates may take a while. English is not my native language so I hope you understand any mistake


End file.
